Australian Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, who has frustrated Beijing by pushing for a multinational investigation into the origination of coronavirus, said that there is no evidence to show that the virus originated in a laboratory in Wuhan, China.
On Tuesday, U.S. President, Donald Trump, said that he was certain that the novel coronavirus originated in a Chinese virology laboratory, although he refused to release the evidence he had seen.
On Friday, Morrison also announced that Australia had no evidence to support that idea, and said the controversy backed his push for an inquiry to understand how the virus began and subsequently spread around the world.
Morrison told a news conference in Canberra:
“What we have before us doesn’t suggest that that is the likely source,”
“There’s nothing we have that would indicate that was the likely source, though you can’t rule anything out in these environments,”
“We know it started in China, we know it started in Wuhan, the most likely scenario that has been canvassed relates to wildlife wet markets, but that’s a matter that would have to be thoroughly assessed.”
The Wuhan Institute of Virology, located in the city where the disease was first identified, has dismissed suggestions that the virus originated in its laboratory.
Although, many scientists now believe the virus originated in wildlife, citing bats and pangolins as potential host species.
Beijing regards the inquiry call as part of U.S. led bullying against China, although Morrison says the world needs to learn precisely where it originated to avoid a repeated outbreak that has killed over 200,000 people as the time of writing and shut down a large part of the global economy.
The Panthera Post 